In an electronic device, there is a case where a variety of accessories having a rod shape are accommodated therein. For example, in the past, a rod antenna is accommodated in a portable or mobile radio receiver, and a stylus pen is accommodated in a tablet computer, a PDA, and a game machine for inputting instructions in a touch panel. In recent years, the rod antenna is also provided in a notebook personal computer (hereinafter, simply referred to as “note PC”), the PDA, or a cellular phone. Some stylus pens or rod antennas are accommodated in a housing of an apparatus when they are not in use, and a portion of them is exposed to the surface of the housing. When they are used, a user picks the exposed portion with the user's fingers to extend to a predetermined length or to separate them from the apparatus.
There are known technologies to drawably accommodate a rod-shaped body such as an antenna in a portable or mobile type electronic device. Japanese Laid-open (Kokai) Patent Publication No. 2002-344220 describes an accommodation structure in which a tip of an antenna guide cylinder and an antenna cap are threaded to be fitted to each other, and in which the antenna cap is rotated upon accommodation of an antenna to be fixed to a terminal body. Japanese Laid-open (Kokai) Patent Publication No. 2004-221728 describes an accommodation structure in which an antenna picking portion has a twisted portion, and in which when a user pushes a terminal body, an antenna can be accommodated in a state where the antenna picking portion faces a predetermined direction, i.e., a trademark faces the front side.
The conventional accommodation structure has no problem if there is a sufficient space on the surface of an apparatus housing for housing the rod-shaped body and an exposed portion can be projected by a sufficient length from the surface of the housing. However, particularly, in a portable or mobile electronic device which has a limited space and needs to have good external appearance, it is difficult to form the rod-shaped body to have a large head portion or a large drawn-out portion. When the drawn-out portion is small, the operability may decrease because a large force or time is required to pick out the drawn-out portion. In addition, in a cellular phone, a PDA, or a note PC, a user may want to perform a drawing operation of the rod-shaped body with the user's hand while holding the apparatus body. Therefore, a drawer structure is desired which makes a user easy to draw a rod-shaped body out of a housing while decreasing a required space on the housing surface.
To make it easy to draw out the rod-shaped body, a drawer structure of a rod-shaped body using a spring or a lever may be provided in an apparatus body; alternatively, a concave portion may be provided in a portion of a housing disposed around a tip of a rod-shaped body so that a user easily can pick out the tip. However, the drawer structure using the spring or the lever has limitations in terms of a cost, an internal space of the apparatus, and a weight. Meanwhile, when the concave portion is provided in the housing, a processing cost for forming the concave portion is required and the strength of the housing may decrease, while impairing the external appearance. In addition, when the rod-shaped body is an antenna, and when a metal component is used for the spring or the lever, or a metal component is used to reinforce the strength of the housing decreased by the concave portion, the communication performance may decrease.
Accordingly, a compelling need has been recognized in connection with addressing such challenges.